


gluttony

by talesofthelotus



Series: XINGTOBER 2020 [2]
Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Chinese Mythology & Folklore, Gen, Human Sacrifice, Taotie - Freeform, Zhang Yixing's Birthday 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-07
Updated: 2020-10-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 02:22:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 400
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26878120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/talesofthelotus/pseuds/talesofthelotus
Summary: he is so, so hungry.
Series: XINGTOBER 2020 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1959373
Comments: 2
Kudos: 22





	gluttony

For days, Yixing lays against the rocks, chained by his wrists and ankles.

“You know why we must do this, right?” his village elder, fretful, as he held Yixing’s chains, as he led Yixing up the cliff. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. We can’t anger them any more.” He’d cried, sniveled, sobbed, as though he was the one being taken to his demise.

Yixing doesn’t say anything as his cuffs are melted shut. Chains hammered into the cliff-face. The permanency of it all would scare him, if he had anything left in him to be scared. What is he even to say, when he is about to be sacrificed to the divine, the monstrous, the monstrously divine and divinely monstrous?

And for days, he lays against the rocks. For the first few, the village elder sends a boy up with two white buns and water, to make sure he doesn’t die to starvation or dehydration before the gods can get to him. Unable to be unchained to feed himself. So the boy feeds him, holding the bun up to Yixing’s cracked lips, feeding him piece by little piece. Pitiful. But Yixing thanks the one person who spares him even a little kindness.

Eventually, they stop sending the boy up. It’s a long climb. All that effort, too much effort for a sacrifice, even if the sacrifice had once been his blood-son. And by then, Yixing is too weak to even curse his father for this, for that, for it all.

For days, Yixing lays against the rocks, and withers. Hunger nests in his stomach, crawls up his throat, threatens to choke him. He wills back tears for they contain water he cannot afford to lose.

But what for, what for? What is he trying so hard to survive for? His bindings are bolted deep into unmoving rock. Irreversible, absolute, final. He’ll be dead soon, limp in the maw of a monster. It’s just a matter of when.

But hunger crawls up his throat. Bursting through his skin, breaking through his unbreakable chains, transforming his lovely face into a monstrous maw. Hunger courses through his veins, through his blood, turning his gifted fingers into clumsy, hooked claws. Turns his slight, pretty body into the grotesque one of a beast, and he grows, grows, tens, hundreds, thousands times larger.

It’s too late before he realises: this is not hunger.

This is _greed_.


End file.
